Olivier Talbot: Acid Magazine

Interview by Glenn Sakamoto

What is Acid?Acid is a magazine where we portray surfing in a humble, exploratory way and connect it to our interests outside surfing, namely art, humour, science and love for beautiful ideas and images. We want to showcase surfing in a way that’s a bit more grown up, outside of usual surf tropes and that will still make you want to get in the water rather than buying a new piece of clothing.

What has been the response to Acid by readers?Well, for the ones that have spontaneously wrote back after receiving their copy it’s been really touching. Lots of unsolicited feedback saying the mag is a beautiful print object with intelligent stories – super positive stuff that’s been heartwarming to say the least. The best one is from a guy who lives on the south coast of England in a super sheltered cove, who can surf his local break only a handful of times a year. He wrote a really empathetic email about how we were portraying surfing the way he lived it (it resonated so well with our own experience of surfing that we ran his story in the following issue).

Tell us a bit about yourself…We’re one person with a photography background, one with a design background, and one with a publishing background. We’re all French and we met through skateboarding. The designer is in Paris and the others lived in Barcelona up until recently. We taught ourselves surfing in the Mediterranean, far from surf culture as most people know it. After a while we were feeling so off from the way surfing is generally portrayed that we came up with the idea of a publication that would make sense for us.

What’s next for Acid?2 more issues in 2014 with the same quality levels as the previous ones and we’ll see where that takes us!

Find out more about Acid Magazine and where to purchase here: acidsurfing.com